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Instead, it will be whoever wins the most Electoral College votes – of which there are only 538, out of more than 330 million people in the United States.
It’s a very different political system to ours here in Australia and it’s not without its critics. Here’s how it works.
How does the elective course system work?
Each state and the District of Columbia is assigned a certain number of Electoral College votes.
Whichever presidential candidate wins the election in each state gets all of that state’s electoral votes.
There are two exceptions: in both Maine and Nebraska, two votes go to whoever wins the majority of the vote, while the remaining two and three go to the candidate who is more popular in each of the congressional districts in each state.
There are a total of 538 Electoral College votes, so the candidate who wins at least 270 wins the presidency.
Do all states get the same number of votes?
Each state has the same number of Electoral College votes as it has representatives in the Senate and Congress combined.
While each state has two seats in the Senate, the number of congressional districts varies by population.
The fewest Electoral College votes for a state is three – the same number as the District of Columbia has six, even though as a district it has no senators or congressmen.
California has the most, 54.
How are the votes of the Electoral College counted?
As voters across the country fill out the ballot with the names of presidential candidates, they are actually voting on which “slate” of electors to send when the Electoral College meets after the election.
They are chosen by each party before elections and are generally officials and party loyalists, although this varies from state to state.
In states where Kamala Harris won this year, the Democratic list of electors will be sent to the Electoral College convention on December 17, while the state where Trump votes will send its Republican list.
Electors cast their votes when the Electoral College meets, and the results are then sent to Congress for certification.
What are the problems with the Electoral College?
Created by the Founding Fathers, who debated whether the presidency should be decided by the people or by Congress, the Electoral College is now nearly a quarter of a millennium old.
As you’d expect from a system that was for the best part designed 250 years ago, there are many criticisms of it.
One of the most obvious is that the Electoral College does not represent the popular vote.
Although historically rare, two of the last six elections have been won by the candidate with fewer national votes – Trump in 2016 and George Bush in 2000. It also happened three times in the 1800s.
The poll is close enough this year to suggest a similar result could happen again.
Part of that depends on representation: The Electoral College gives far more weight to sparsely populated states compared to larger states.
Take California and Texas as a few examples. As two densely populated states, they have the two most electors with 54 and 40 respectively – one Electoral College vote for approximately 722,000 and 750,000 people respectively.
Wyoming, on the other hand, has three electoral votes for its population of about 580,000 – giving it a far more influential one elector per 200,000 residents.
The Electoral College also doesn’t do a good job of representing all voters in the state, as all electoral votes go to the more popular candidate, regardless of whether they win by 10 percent or 0.01 percent.
Again, let’s take California as an example. In 2020, Joe Biden won the state by more than five million votes, winning 55 electoral votes.
If an additional four million people had voted for Donald Trump, Joe Biden would still have received 55 electoral votes.
This brings us to the overblown influence of the battlefield area.
In most states, the winners are close to a foregone conclusion. Harris will win California, the District of Columbia and Vermont. Trump will take Wyoming, West Virginia and Oklahoma.
There are dozens more — only seven states are considered to be really up for grabs for both Trump and Harris.
As we have established, an additional four million votes for Trump in California in 2020 would have had absolutely no impact on the outcome of the election.
But if he had grabbed an additional 45,000 across Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, he would have flipped those states and won the election.
“It’s not so much about the candidates as it is about the anti-democratic electoral college,” said Matt Muchowski.
He is the chairman of the Democratic Caucus in Waukegan, Illinois, a predominantly Hispanic working-class city that has struggled with closing factories and a deteriorating waterfront.
Because it is a Democratic stronghold, Illinois is largely bypassed by presidential candidates, although its northern neighbor, Wisconsin, is a common stomping ground for presidential candidates.
“It’s frustrating that the votes of certain voters count more and they diminish and discredit the votes of more urban, more colored voters,” Muchowski said.
Will the elective course be changed or removed?
Because the Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution, removing or changing it is extremely difficult and requires a level of consensus that is rare in American politics these days—it’s been more than 30 years since the last successful amendment.
To get around this, some states have signed up to a system whereby they pledge their electoral votes to whoever wins the national election, regardless of the outcome in their state.
Known as the National Interstate Compact on the Popular Vote, it would need states with a total of 270 electoral votes to commit to it for it to take effect.
Since it was introduced in 2004, it is currently in 17 states and the District of Columbia, worth 209 votes, though it is likely to face legal challenges even if it reaches the threshold.
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